A Family Affair
by squelchything
Summary: Being the further misadventures of Ivan Vorpatril at the Emperor's Wedding. "Ivan considered starting a drinking game. If he was half-drunk and Miles was half his weight, that should even things up..."


  
The bill for wine alone must be setting Gregor back the worth of a small District, Ivan calculated. This mental effort was made more difficult by the amount he'd already drunk.

Mind you, if everyone was lying around in incapacitated, intoxicated heaps, then no-one would be able to cause any problems on Gregor's wedding-night. Not that Ivan had any intention anything of the sort. Gregor irate was Gregor distracted from the vital business of cooking up a little Vorbarra or two. Besides, after all this ritual, the two of them deserved to get laid. Ivan's mind boggled at this point. Not a context where he particularly wanted to imagine Gregor, though he had no objection at all to the lovely Laisa...

More selfishly, he hadn't made Gregor angry since they'd been eleven and six, and he'd dropped Gregor's best toy starship out of a third-floor window (but it had been all Miles's fault, really), and afterwards he'd burst into tears and had to be taken home by his mother, which wasn't an option any more. He wasn't keen to break a twenty-four year record.

Great-Aunt Olga in her best party togs, incoming. Ivan grabbed his glass and sidestepped neatly into a window embrasure. She was likely to inquire about _his_ hypothetical wedding, and loudly assure him that _such_ a good-looking boy would have no trouble getting the girls, thus causing any girls in earshot to flee for the hills. The company at this party...The problem with being Emperor was that you had to invite not only your own ghastly relatives to your wedding, but everyone else's as well.

The danger passed onwards with a swish of about five layers of skirts. Ivan breathed again. Prematurely. Someone small with an air of _bounce_ moved into his field of vision.

Miles, floating in the happy lovesick haze he'd been in for the last fortnight, evidently hadn't had enough wine yet to knock him out. And Ekaterin had gone off to the lav or somewhere with Martya, so she wasn't here to absorb his attention. Ivan considered starting a drinking game. If he was half-drunk and Miles was half his weight, that should even things up...

"Hey, Ivan, it's over! No more Wedding Campaign under General Aunt Alys. We have an Empress!"

"Hooray." Ivan considered. "Miles, do you think of your entire life in military metaphors?"

"Uh. Yes."

"Right." Ivan shrugged. "Next campaign is to get them to repojush–repor–breed. Thing is, these days it's a sure bet. No peering hopefully at waistlines. Just pop it in the can and wait nine months, and result."

"Unless," Miles said, "someone kidnaps the replicator and holds it to ransom."

"Yeah. Guard mini-Gregor with your life."

"There's another job for you, Ivan," Miles carolled. "Imperial replicator-sitter."

"Nuh-uh-uh," Ivan said hastily, although of course if it came down to it..."I've a better idea. 'S easy nowadays. They can have twins. Quadruplets. Octopudlets. Then they can leave backup kids in different places, like with your parents on Sergyar."

Miles grinned. "A Vorbarra population explosion!"

Uncle Aral loomed up at Ivan's shoulder. "Absolutely not, Ivan. I'm not raising any more little Emperors at my time of life. Gregor can do it himself. As can other people." He exchanged a look of genealogical enthusiasm with Miles. Ivan leaned back and tried to look sober. That had gone down about as well as the time he'd hinted to Gregor that with galactic medicine, a wife wasn't really needed. Gregor had given him a Look and said, "It would have been hard enough for Aral and Cordelia; do you really think a cloned heir would be accepted for the Imperium?" Ivan had heroically refrained from pointing out that a Gregor-clone wouldn't be a five-foot-diameter sphere.

Miles was babbling, "...lots of little girls. Ekaterin wants girls. D'you think, when they're doing the gene-scan, that they could...tweak things a bit, to make them look more like Ekaterin? It would be unfair if they had to go through life looking like me, don't you think? And I hope they won't turn out as hyperactive as I was–"

"–am," Ivan corrected.

"–if it wasn't for that, we could do them all at once. Three girls, I think, or p'raps four–"

"The all-brunette Team Vorkosigan?" Ivan asked. "What about an heir? I want off the hook for that, too–"

"Oh, we'll have boys as well, of course. I'd like to name one of them after Gran'da. It's such a shame he couldn't have lived to see this–"

Ivan picked his wineglass up from the window-sill. If _he_ had had a fiance, he wouldn't be wasting his time talking about uterine replicators, oh no. At this rate, his heir would be born when he was about sixty, to a mother who was currently an embryo. Hell, he could start on the Koudelka granddaughters. Perhaps he was cursed; as soon as he even considered settling down with a woman, she got engaged to someone else. Unless she was Lady Donna, in which case she turned into a man and _then_ got engaged to someone else.

Even Mark had managed to attach Kareen, however he'd pulled that off. Since it was Kareen, it couldn't be for mercenary reasons. Ivan sighed. Surely, with all this romantic example Gregor was setting, there would be some unattached females in a susceptible mood? On the other hand, they'd probably want a scaled-down version of Gregor's matrimonial circus, to start next week. This prospect didn't appeal.

"Ivan...oh, Ivan?"

Ivan focused on his shortest relative. "What is it now?"

"I've had a thought. Gregor's married."

"Don't I know it."

"I'm going to be married." Miles grinned.

"Know that, too. You've only told me nineteen times."

"You realise what that means? The only person left for your mother to use her matchmaking energies on is you."

"Oh, don't remind me." Ivan sighed. He slid down onto the window-sill, and decided that he needed more wine to cope with this prospect. Miles watched as a servitor refilled Ivan's glass.

"Still, perhaps she's given up on grandchildren by now."

Ivan, his mouth full, glanced up and registered Miles's expectant air and decidedly evil grin. _Uh-oh_.

"Perhaps she and Simon will give you a little sibling instead."

For the second time that evening, Ivan choked on his wine.  



End file.
